Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Of course not. They were born about 140 years apart. But close to three years after making the observation that they really, really look alike, finally: proof that I am not the only one who noticed it:

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Recently people have been asking me "where do you come up with your posts?" I don't think it's egotistical to admit that I think my posts are interesting. Of course they interest me! Anyone else who is interested enough to read or ask seems to find some of them interesting too. I was thinking about doing an "Anatomy of an On the Main Line post," and I'll do that sometime. But for now, I'll reveal some of my secrets, which should not be such a secret. First, there are generally two kinds of OtML posts. One is an analysis of a topic, be it some kind of biblical question concerning language or interpretation, or a historical question. The other is of the "here is a cool picture/ paragraph/ quote/ article/ essay/ antiquarian something-or-other." There used to be a third kind, a rant about something (generally Jewishly) political, or cultural, but I've gotten most of that out of my system! Here I will concern myself with the second type of post.

The answer is that I read a lot. Point a leads to point b, and that leads to point z, and sometimes it leads to point zxwr3$35. You never know. I don't have an amazing collection of seforim, books and periodicals, but I believe what I do own is judiciously chosen to interest me. I find material and leads there. I also go to libraries when I can, sometimes in search of something specific, sometimes not. But I usually come away with something of interest to explore further.

But then there are the riches and resources that are online, some free and some available via subscription.

Google Book Search is free, and it gets better every month (despite some real flaws). Not only is it a good resource, but if you play around with it you can even crack some of it's limitations. Their new agreement will only make it better.

Sometimes books which are unavailable there can be read (at least the parts I want) on amazon.com or bn.com. You never know, always check.

There are other digitization projects to check out, like the one on archive.org. The University of Michigan's Mirlyn library catalog was and is a good resource, as it incorporates all of the books Google has scanned from them but not placed online (provided there is no copyright issue).

Recently many libraries joined with U Mich and formed the Hathi Trust, which is like Mirlyn, only includes many more libraries. It will work as a backup of Google Books, and at the moment includes many things which Google did not yet put online.

There are free collections of digital material on many university web sites, such as this:

Then there are paid archives, which one can access through university subscription if one has such access, which one, of course, does.

There is JStor, there are databases by Proquest, Gale and Chadwyck-Healy.

There is the amazing, amazing hebrewbooks.org. There is still the very valuable seforimonline.com. There is Otzar Ha-chochma, the Bar Ilan Responsa Project, Daat, and there are great friends who I send things to and who send things to me. Of course, there are also the most valuable comments, emails I receive and posts by other bloggers to stimulate and inform me.

I can go on, and maybe later I will. But in short, there are TONS of material available for my posts, or any sort of posts. If my passion was the history of invention I could probably run a fascinating blog about that, at least one that fascinated me.

Some time ago I came across a work on the trop from 1698 called The Taghmical Art ; or, the Art of Expounding Scripture by the points usually called Accents, but are really Tactical : a Grammatical, Logical, and Rhetorical instrument of interpretations by Walter Cross.

And it looks like this:

and includes gems like this:

Here's a fun table:

A reviewer from 1824 had this to say:

It seems this book fascinated and confused quite a lot of people who only wanted to learn about how the Jews cantillate their Bible!

For a long time I wondered what the heck he meant by "taghmical." It seemed to be a neologism, a word coined by himself. From context I understood that it related to the biblical accents. Did it mean "pertaining to the taggin"? That made no sense, but that doesn't always stop everyone.

Then I had a brainstorm: the Oxford English Dictionary.

And they came through:

Taghmical is from טעמים, with Cross taking the liberty of wackily transcribing the ע as gh. Clever.

(Other clever English words of that era: mecubalist and alcoran. But I bet you can tell what these mean)

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Here's a very funny notice from a 1928 issue of Beis Va'ad Le-chachomim:

As you can see, it suggests retiring the most famous works by Yehuda Leib Ben Ze'ev, who was one of the Me'assfim, and part of Mendelssohn's circle. As a great hebraist, the works mentioned here were hugely popular in eastern Europe, giving the keys to the Hebrew language and grammar to many generations. The footnote (citing Lev Ha-ivri) claims that he wrote תלמוד לשון עברי on shabbos, never married and died on the toilet!

For an earlier list of books one ought not read, see here, same publication.

(Since I can't resist mentioning Shadal, the Jewish advocacy for the utility of Syriac for plumbing the depths of Aramaic, and therefore Hebrew, is often attributed to him. But he himself attributed the inspiration for the idea to Ben Ze'ev, although it was Shadal who first mastered Syriac and showed how it could be useful. See Ohev Ger (2nd ed. pg. 93):

This was called to my attention in the course of reading Rubin's translation of Shadal's Prolegomeni. Shadal mentions Giuda Löwe ben Zeev here.)

In the 19th century there was a great deal of Christian missionary activity directed toward the Jews emanating from England. This activity was concentrated in the lands under British imperial rule, but also in eastern Europe, and in England itself. For example, there was the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews. This society, and others, produced Hebrew and Yiddish translations of the New Testament, and printed Hebrew Bibles without Jewish commentaries for distribution among Jews. Many of the missionaries were themselves Jewish. It is my sense that there was no small amount of evangelical Jewish Christians in England during that century.

Famous among them was Christian David Ginsburg, but there were others as well. (You can hear a most interesting lecture by Shnayer Leiman on a former Chassid, Ezekiel Stanisław Hoga, who translated a famous missionary tract into Hebrew, here. The tract was The Old Paths by Alexander McCaul [1837], and was translated as נתיבות עולם by Hoga. The lecture discusses various Jewish legends surrounding the mis-identified author of this book, including a story told by R. Kook)

Previously I had posted on some interesting information by one such Jewish missionary, Moses Margoliouth (here and here). Margoliouth was born in 1820, became a Christian in 1838, was ordained a minister in 1844, and died in 1881. In an obituary I read, it was noted that he had been a student of the aforementioned McCaul in his youth. He wrote a number of books aimed at refuting Judaism, and was editor of a journal called The Hebrew Christian Witness, from which the following very interesting material is culled.

The first is a review of an amazing Rabbinic Bible (מקראות גדולות) published in 1874 by British Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler, under the title תורת אלהים. Take a look at this:

As you can see, in addition to a very good choice of rabbinic commentaries, the edition includes the rare Masorah of the Targum Anqylas, with notes by Shadal, as well as publishing for the first time the apparently anonymous commentary on that targum, which had been known as the יאר, after the date (רי"א is יאר , that is 5211, or 1451 CE) written in the manuscript, which was then residing in the British Museum (I think). It's previous owner was Shadal. It was he who discovered this manuscript (as a teenager, in a dusty geniza in his hometown) and he made great use out of it in his commentary אוהב גר on the Targum , as well as in his המשתדל commentary on the Torah. Rabbi Adler also refers to this commentary by its true title, as identified by Shadal: Pathshegen פתשגן, (from Esther 3.14), as it is now known. In addition to that commentary, he also included his own commentary on Targum Onkelos (י"א Anqylas) called נתינה לגר.

Here is the preliminary review by Margoliouth:

As you can see, he was not a fan of Adler, and took to harping on the name of his commentary as a means of ridiculing him. In truth, it is highly unlikely that Adler did not remember the origin of the term netina la-ger; rather, in keeping with the spirit of melitzah (for better or worse) he chose a clever name for his work.

What follows is from a later issue, allegedly a letter received from a reader (as opposed to written by Margoliouth). As you can see, this critic takes the interesting tack of attacking Adler for writing his magnum opus in rabbinic Hebrew, rather than English, and publishing it in Vilna, rather than in Britain. He assumes that Adler did so to basically hide it from his public.

Rabbi Elli Fischer of ADDeRabbi has already reviewed the forthcoming The Koren Sacks Siddur (here), but I was sent a copy too, so I feel I should review it as well (which is, after all, why I received it).

Since Reb Elli dealt primarily with translation and it's treatment of women-friendly and Israel centered themes, I feel I should comment on other aspects.

First of all, it is beautiful. It so happens that I love the Koren font, but that is only part of it. It is layed out neatly, and the binding seems to be exceptional -- very important for a siddur that is to be used daily for many years. Elli already commented on the innovative move to place the Hebrew on the left and the English on the right. It does indeed take getting used to (say, a minute) but once you do it seems so complementary and natural. A good layout technique; my compliments to whomever thought of it. There are little quirky things which look nice; an asterisk marks the aliyos in the section of weekday Torah readings. A tiny sideways isosceles trinagle marks the point where the chazzan reads from. The English is in normal font, rather than italics (coughyouknowwhocough). From a layout-design perspective, the only complaints I have is that there is too little variation in font size. This isn't really a problem for someone who is comfortable with a siddur, but I can see this being difficult for some. Also, the section on berachos is not found after shacharis, as in most siddurim. Again, not a huge deal, but unless there is some significant improvement, changing the familiar layout should be reconsidered.

In the comments at Elli's review, someone suggested that the te'amim (cantillation signs) be included on all biblical verses. That may be extreme, but they are properly included for the Shema. However, I wondered why they were not included for Az Yashir; while it is a kabbalistic custom to say Az Yashir with the trope, this siddur does not eschew the kabbalistic influence on the siddur generally. Thus, all the expected le-shem yichuds are included, even if a little note that "some say" them precedes. I noticed, with my approval, that morid ha-gshm is pointed with segols.

I didn't get the chance to read the commentary and translation extensively (besides, Elli already commented on the quality of the translation), but I have a few words about it. British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's erudition and inspirational ability is known to all who have heard or read works by him. The little I did preview didn't reveal any earth-shattering commentary, but that is to be expected (preferred?) in what should be a popular and reliable siddur. I noticed that he had fun in his translation of the zemer Yah Ribbon Olam; in keeping with the rhyming Aramaic (ve-olmaya, malchaya, ve-simhaya, le-hachavaya, etc.) he rhymed all the stiches in English (adored, Lord, applaud, accord), keeping it true for all five paragraphs. Pretty cool. Upon request, I'll scan that page if anyone wants to judge how well he accomplished this.

I began to compile a list of sources cited in the commentary, but did not get very far. I noticed R. Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, R. Jacob Zvi Mecklenburg, Ibn Ezra, Radak, R. Avraham Maimonides, and, of course, the siddur of Rav Amram, and Tolstoy. A great deal of the commentary seems to be original; at least that is the assumption I make for unattributed commentary. Since the edition is still not released, and improvements can yet be made, I'd like to go on record suggesting a complete bibliography at the end!

Finally, a little thing I noticed and thought was interesting. In Az Yashir (pg. 80, Ex. 15.3) we see יהוה איש מלחמה translated as "the Lord is a master of war." In the introduction to the Birnbaum siddur we find some of the principles which Birnbaum followed, and the reasons why he felt his siddur was a vast improvement over those which had come before him. We find the following example:

"Every student of Hebrew knows that בן is not always equivalent of a son. It frequently denoted age, membership in a definitive class, or the possession of some quality. Similarly, איש and בעל are often used interchangably to characterize a person. Thus, איש לשון, (Psalm 140.12) means a slanderer, and איש מלחמה, (Exodus 15.3) a warrior. Hence, the rendering "the Lord is a man of war" is erroneous and nothing short of sacrilegious." (Ha-siddur Ha-shalem; pg. xiv). Birnbaum goes on to call this type of "literalness . . . typical of what has crept into the Siddur's translation as a result of copying from men unfamiliar with idiomatic Hebrew."

Is R. Sacks's "master of war" the same as "man of war"? Maybe, maybe not. In any event, Birnbaum was not a native English speaker; Sacks is. Speaking of idiomatic English, I couldn't help but to think that "master of war" evokes - at least unconsciously - Bob Dylan's Masters of War. I can't imagine that Sacks wished to apply the message of that song to God; but I can imagine that the phrase was rolling around in his mind, just as it is in the mind of everyone who knows that song, and to him it seemed very good idiomatic English, that is, normally a phrase like that would seem stilted, but in this case "the Lord is a master of war" seems very natural to the reader.

In all, I like the siddur very much. I like how it looks, how durable it is, how relaxed with itself and its modern Orthodox ideology it is, how halachically normative it is, and that font! Love it. You also get R. Sacks's commentary on Pirke Avot free. You won't be disappointed if you buy it.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

I found the following interesting message to the yeshiva bochurim of Israel from an English periodical from 1967 called Steps at http://www.hebrewbooks.org/. Steps issued from the "Movement For Torah Judaism," based in Jerusalem, and the articles apparrently are from their Hebrew publications He-hadash yitkadesh we-ha-kadosh yithaddesh ("The New will be Sanctified and the Sainted Renewed") and Mehalechim ("Steps"). The former name (He-hadash etc.) was coined, I think, by Professor E. E. Urbach in his speech at the dedication of the Hebrew University in 1925. Articles in this publication were written by Urbach, Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal and others. You can read the opening address by Urbach at the Movement for Torah Judaism's initial meeting here.